Power outages are a frequent problem with which both customers and electric utilities must contend. The interruption of power at a customer's premises, whether residential, industrial, or business, can occur for any number of reasons. Interruption may be, for example, a power outage lasting several hours caused by a power line being disconnected by a collapsed tree. For the residential customer, the long-term outage of power can represent anything from a mere inconvenience to an extreme health and safety risk. The owner of a factory or business may experience a loss of sales and productivity due to the interruption in the supply of electric power. Conversely, an interruption may only be momentary, such as caused by a breaker at a substation that trips due to a surge of electricity generated during a storm.
Ideally, power companies or electric utilities strive to serve the needs of their customers, and they understand the critical importance of the core product they deliver. With regard to power outages, power companies seek to maximize the amount of information they can obtain and reduce the amount of time it takes to respond. In a typical situation, a customer that experiences an outage must place a call to the power company. Almost all power companies today have in place an existing call handling platform, and in particular an integrated voice response system (IVR), also known as a voice response unit (VRU). When an IVR answers a customer's call, the IVR presents a menu of choices that the customer can choose from using his or her phone. These choices may include the option to “pay bill” or “change existing service plan” or “report a power outage.” The customer or caller responds by voice or by using a touch-tone pad to enter in their selections. Such IVRs or VRUs are widely known and used not only by electric utilities, but also by other public utilities, credit card companies, banks, and almost every customer or product based company.
A particular problem is presented during times of power outage. The inhabitant of a building in which the power is out may be temporarily away from the building. In this situation, the power may be out in his or her building but might not be reported for hours due to a lack of discovery of the outage. Still yet, a customer who is ready to make a call must first find the number of the power company, a task that is all the more arduous in the dark. After calling the power company and being connected with the power company's IVR, the customer must still go through the menu items, entering in a variety of information such as their customer account number and PIN.
The result of these problems associated with the interruption of power is that a power company may not be able to obtain sufficient information about a power outage, or may not be able to obtain outage information as quickly as possible. Customers also must experience the inconvenience of having to place a call and interact with an IVR.
Various types of systems have been introduced to try to reduce this problem. Devices with power notification features are in existence. These devices monitor for power outages and automatically contact a power company. Most of these devices need to be installed or coupled to an existing meter at the location of the customer's premises. These types of devices tend to require extensive modification to the existing infrastructure at the location of the customer, as well as the installation of new equipment or machines at a power company's headquarters. Other systems may include remote power outage notification devices that can be plugged into a standard electric outlet and connected to a customer's existing phone jack. To support such devices, a power company must still introduce or install new hardware equipment to receive communication from these units.
There is, however, conspicuously absent in the field of technology an inexpensive power outage notification device or unit that reduces the new equipment costs of a power company.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to fill this gap by providing a cost-effective power outage notification device and system that not only uses the existing electric and telecommunications infrastructure of a customer's premises, but also the existing infrastructures of a power company's outage response center.
Another object of the invention is to provide a power outage notification device that uses no batteries to power itself, but still manages power effectively with minimal disruption to the customer.
Still another object is to provide a battery-less device that can manage the power while at the same time reducing “false positives,” i.e., the report of a temporary or momentary outage that does not require electric utility service.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a system and method relating to the communications between a power outage notification device and a power company's existing customer service infrastructure.
A further object is to provide a remotely programmable and re-programmable electric outlet based power status notification device that manages power based on the parameters of the remote inputs.